Spotlight on the TeamHealth Medical Call Center

In today’s world, the rapidly evolving healthcare industry has placed its focus on providing access to high quality, patient-centric care, with an unprecedented emphasis on cost containment and continuum of care. Companies, communities, and medical professionals are challenged with the overwhelming task of balancing quality care with new cost initiatives.

Services are branded to each practice with the ability to gather pertinent data and customize a documentation system that allows practices to drive specific directives for both pediatric and adult populations.

Another key feature is the ability to integrate patient information into EMRs to meet patient centered medical home and ACO (accountable care organization) requirements.

Nurse Advice Lines: Nurse advice lines and community lines can direct your patient population to the most appropriate level of care while promoting your services. Nurse advice lines can offer branded healthcare and program information that promotes a healthy community and creates an awareness of an organization’s centers of excellence or specialty programs. The reporting and data collection features also provide valuable information about the healthcare needs of your population.

Additional benefits of a THMCC community or nurse advice line include:

Readmission prevention and appropriate care utilization

Patient acquisition

Revenue reconciliation reporting

Branded EXITcare or customized health information emailed to callers

Web-based branded online self-triage program

Appointment scheduling

Physician referrals

A dedicated ED (emergency department) nurse advice line or triage service helps hospitals respond to calls from patients with inquiries concerning their need for emergency care. THMCC ED nurse advice and triage line services:

Provide access for callers questioning their need for an ED visit

Promote appropriate ED utilization

Prevents unnecessary readmissions

Provides opportunity to refer other services within system

Eliminates the risk of ED handling clinical questions

Allows clinical ED staff to stay focused on in-house patient care

Refer all real-time call records on callers to the ED

Transitional Care: In many cases, the provision of care is not complete when the patient visit or hospital stay ends. THMCC works with healthcare providers to develop relationships with patients that support care plan compliance long after they return home.

Transitional care management means preparing patients for their first visit, and then accompanying them through post-visit follow-up and post-hospital care. THMCC’s post-discharge callback services are fully customizable to the needs of specific patient populations, which include:

Outbound daily call campaigns for both clinical and non-clinical populations

Specialized scripting utilized for high-risk patients

Inpatient or ED patient population

EMR (electronic medical record) access available

All calls performed 24-48 hours post-discharge

Optional callback line for patients experiencing symptoms

The value of these transitional care efforts can be measured in ROI (return on investment) in the following areas:

Avoidable readmissions are a major financial problem for the nation’s healthcare system. For patients, hospitalizations alone are stressful, even more so when they result in subsequent readmissions. THMCC’s outbound call campaign services are specifically designed for high-risk patients, and include:

Assessment of patient’s understanding and compliance to medication, discharge instructions, follow-up appointments, and current symptoms

Optional callback line for patients experiencing symptoms

Physician Answering Services: With ever-increasing workloads and patient care responsibilities, physician burnout is a very real concern for hospitals, healthcare organizations, and private practices. The stress of a work/life imbalance can lower physician job satisfaction and hinder physician recruitment.

Delegating the workload to a specialized team of medical professionals can significantly reduce physician burnout. THMCC realizes that in order to take care of patients, they must also take care of their providers. Collaborating with the TeamHealth Medical Call Center and their team of telephone triage RNs can provide the proper work/life balance for physicians, which in turn, will mean the best possible care for patients.

THMCC offers physician and practice answering services to provide seamless access for clinical and non-clinical calls. Patient coordinators deliver a high level of customer service and are supervised by a RN. Features include:

The TeamHealth Medical Call Center enters into true partnerships with clients to provide the individual service offering, with measurable results, and to develop a long-term relationship. Technology allows THMCC to meet the needs of the changing healthcare industry while they continue to make the patient experience their primary focus. Creating successful, long-term client relationships is their goal

Founded by a team of physicians more than twenty years ago, the THMCC has the advantage of having a provider perspective in each aspect of the services they provide. THMCC understands the special bond between physician and patient. Like their clients, they value each caller as an individual who deserves a clinically correct and caring response from their staff to ensure a positive experience, which adds value to their relationship with their clients. More than twenty years of experience and ten million triage calls show that the TeamHealth Medical Call Center’s medical call center solutions can serve a vital role in patient care coordination efforts.